Page 57 of The Godhead Complex
The scientist appeared very bothered with all the questions. “Tetrodotoxin is a common biotoxin in certain species of octopus, puffer fish, worms, toads—”
“The newt.” Frypan stood up.
“Really?” Isaac asked him. “The little guy?”
The woman gave them her full attention now. Isaac could seePr. Morganstitched above the right pocket of her lab coat and another long set of letters that didn’t mean anything to him. “I’m surprised Kletter didn’t warn you about all this. . . . Bringing you all the way to California from your safe haven? There are things you need to know, here. It’s very common to find birds and other animals dead from newt poisoning. It’s part of the evolution that has become an epidemic . . .”
“Epidemic of evolution?” Isaac repeated.
“Yes. When one species becomes more present than others, the entire ecosystem tilts out of balance. Birds, rabbits, even snakes have lost large populations in recent years . . .” Morgan looked over her shoulder to the lab assistants and held up her finger for them to wait a moment.
Isaac tried to make sense of it all, how fragile life could be. “Jackie had touched Newt a hundred times at least and then that bug flew in her mouth and she scraped at her tongue. She put all that toxic crap right into her mouth!” Jackie drank from Isaac’s canteen, too. It was a wonder he hadn’t gotten sick.
“But she’ll be okay?” Frypan asked. “You can get the poison out?”
Morgan nodded, “You’re lucky.”
But Isaac didn’t feel lucky. He felt trapped.
“You got here just in time. Had it been a few more hours, she’d be dead.”
Isaac felt a chill, then a rush of heat. He needed to see Jackie. “Take us to her.” He hit his palm against the glass. “And Cowan.” Morgan just stared back at him. He pounded louder on the glass.
Something wasn’t right.
“Cowan is a different case.” Morgan slowly unlocked the glass door. Isaac felt a wave of relief. “We’ll move you to a lower floor. You’ll be able to see them once they’re both stable.”
Isaac moved to go, anxious to get out of that room. To get the hell out of there for good.
“But first,” Morgan said, blocking the exit from the pod. “You need to tell me exactly what you know about Kletter and where she is.” She raised her eyebrows and folded her arms.She knows.
Frypan stepped froward. “What did you mean when you said Cowan was a different case?” The professor could cross her arms and raise her eyebrows all she wanted, but she couldn’t deny a Glader of old some answers. “Something else from nature’s evolution?”
Morgan shook her head. “Not from nature.” She let her arms fall to the side. “Look. What Cowan has, we’ve only seen once before.” She looked over her shoulder as she motioned for Isaac and Frypan to step out of the glass pod. Isaac gladly exited that prison but Frypan moved slower; his eyes didn’t leave the corner of the lab where the curtained pod had revealed the flash of metal the day before.Could the Griever have been a figment of their imagination?Maybe they did have some slight poisoning from touching Jackie or drinking from the same canteen.
“But that other person recovered, they’re alright?” Isaac asked, hopeful. If Jackie was okay, Cowan had to be okay too. He needed Ms. Cowan to be okay for Sadina.
Morgan frowned. “Where I saw it before wasn’t in aperson.” She looked over her shoulder again and pointed, “It was on that shelf over there.”
Isaac traced her gaze to a lab shelf filled with glass instruments and surgical equipment.
Huh?
What kind of infection did Cowan have?
War tactics.
Funneling the enemy.
That’s exactly how these islands, jutting from the ocean like the shoulders of giants, made the Orphan soldier feel. They left him little choice of direction. Like the ship was being led in by an enemy. A heavy wind blew along the choppy waters and made it all the more difficult to steer.
“We’re going to get stuck,” he said to Orange, but the truth was they already were. If he could turn theMaze Cutteraround and try again, go back out farther west, outside of those little islands—he would have. “It’s too shallow.” The ship creaked from below. “That’s not from water pressure, it’s the rocks.” He lowered the ship’s speed to five knots. The wind howled at the windows.
Orange looked through her binoculars at the maze of islands ahead. “I don’t know what happened. Two little landmasses turned into twenty big ones.” The rest of the crew were on the deck, braving the gales and gawking at the beauty. The greenest of trees pointed up from the bluest of waters, shapes and colors that probably resembled the Earth before the sun flares and disease. It was breathtaking, but they’d have plenty of time to enjoy the niceness of it all when the boat became grounded. “Oh ship . . .” Orange pointed ahead. A shipwreck. One that looked like it had been there a hundred years.
Minho steered quickly to the right, away from whatever rocks and ship-destroying things were over there, trying to hug the other side of the waters, but Orange was quick to correct him. “There’s another wreck over there. A newer one. You’ve got to stay right in the middle.”
His hands shook on the wheel as he steered the boat between a changing center of water through long skinny islands. Dozens of islands. A hundred different paths. The wind pushed the ship back and forth, rougher than the tide at night, reminding them how small and insignificant they were. He’d been prepared for Cranks, and war, but not quite the wrath of nature, herself.
